340 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. (Vor. XXXIV. 
at which time, with the centerboard up, a “sharpy ” (the favor- 
ite form of sailboat, imported here from Connecticut) may be 
sailed in a straight line from the inlet to the town. Behind 
the protecting shoals the water is always quiet, so that one 
may go collecting in this part of the harbor in a skiff at times 
when the breakers are high in the inlet and running freely 
along the seaward edge of the shoals. The wealth of life buried 
in the sand shoals and mud flats is remarkable — every spadeful 
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Fic. x. —Beaurort HARBOR. After U. S. C. and G. S. Chart 420. 
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brings up something. Worms are of course best represented, 
although sea anemones, holothurians, spatangoid urchins, bur- 
rowing Crustacea, and mollusks abound. The natural absence 
of rocks over the bottom forces the sessile forms to make use 
of whatever will afford a foothold. Diopatra tubes become 
covered with ascidians, these with alga, hydroids, polyzoa, and 
. small tubicolous annelids. Algz and sponges fasten on par 
tially submerged shells. The oyster beds (“oyster rocks" in 
the local vernacular) distributed round the margin of the flats 
afford a home for many other attached mollusks, and for anem- 
ones and sponges, while crabs, gasteropods, nudibranchs, ophi. 
